Tuesdays @ TFC/YMCA – 7.8.14 (Ahimsa – Courage)

Tuesdays @ TFC/YMCA – 7.8.14 (Ahimsa – Courage)

In our Tuesday classes, we studied the 7 Chakras leading up to July. As I continue to learn more and more about the philosophy behind yoga, it has brought my classes to learning about the yamas and niyamas. As we take the month of July to learn more about Ahimsa (Nonviolence), please feel free to comment below and continue to discussion :). Enjoy!

Finding our CourageMantra – I have courage.

All around the world, children’s innocence is destroyed by abuse and horror. If we look closely, we can trace all of these acts of greed, control and insecurity back to their root: fear. Fear creates violence.

The first kind of fear is instinctual and built in us for survival. The second kind of fear is fear of the unfamiliar. The unfamiliar can become an abundant place for our exploration once we realize this fear lives only in our imagination. It is only our minds that have created the turmoil in our gut and kept us hostage to the possibility of our own lives.

Seeking out people and experiences we would normally avoid provides a fertile place to learn new things about ourselves and about life. Even those we might call enemies have much to teach us. As we walk into our fears with both people and experiences, we will find that our sense of self has grown. Thus, to create a life and a world free of violence is first and foremost to find our own courage.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to be afraid without being paralyzed. Courage is found by facing our fears – the small ones, the big ones, the embarrassing ones, and the scary ones. To live the fullness that our own life is inviting us into, we often have to let ourselves be afraid and do it anyway. If we keep ourselves safe, how will our courage grow?